Facebook’s Snapchat competitor is called “Poke,” confirming what we already knew: The word “Poke” is innuendo for sexy time.
As the veteran venture capitalist Bill Gurley said recently, it’s important to be an optimist in the startup business, as most great tech companies “will sail close to death and then rise up again.” Just a year and a half ago, Aviary, a New York startup focused on creative tools for photo editing, was certainly lost at sea, its original vision floundering. But by drastically shifting its focus from the web to mobile, and from a consumer facing startup to one that powers other businesses, Aviary has become a juggernaut, the closest thing to a modern day Adobe for the mobile era.A great business story and just the kind of innovation the photo industry needs.
“When we were web only, during a big day, we might have 100,000 people edit photos. This year, more than 50 million people used our tools on Thanksgiving.”
Now that about 45 percent of adults in the United States own smartphones, citizens are constantly equipped with an Internet connection, GPS functionality and a digital camera. Governments are taking advantage of that fact by using apps to ease the burden of providing services to residents.Turns out government can be kinda cool sometimes! Check out the infographic here.
Ever use an app created by a federal, state or local government?
We have a ton of things we want to accomplish here and working for some conglomerate or having bean-counting investors breathing down our necks simply isn’t the way for us to achieve them.Taptaptap founder John Casasanta • In a statement released via the Camera+ developer’s blog, announcing that the popular camera replacement app had sold its 8 millionth copy. In a new profile on TheNextWeb, Casasanta revealed that his company has declined acquisition offers from some of the biggest names in tech, including Google, Twitter, Adobe, and Zynga. He says that, since Facebook acquired Instagram, the offers for his company have continued to grow both in size and frequency; however, the development studio simply values its independence too much to turn its direction over to the whim of investors. source (via • follow)
» That’s about a million a day since its launch in February, keeping the ultra-popular game number one among paid apps in the App Store. The press release also noted that over 6 billion drawings have been created, with “latrine” being the least popular word to draw. Suddenly, the $210 million that Zynga spent on the studio last month doesn’t sound so high, does it?
After a two-year wait, nostalgia-driven Android users who own devices running Android 2.2 or higher, can finally join their iOS brethren on popular photo-sharing app Instagram. Initially released for the iPhone in 2010, Instagram’s Android release comes only a week and a half after the developers opened a waiting list for users who wanted to know as soon as they could get their hands on the software. The company says over 400,000 joined the list, which certainly sets high expectations for its official release. So, do you plan on downloading Instagram? source
Zynga plans to buy OMGPOP, creators of the mega-popular ‘Draw Something’ iOS game. The move is unsurprising to many industry analysts, several of whom began predicting either a buyout or a clone of the new title, after ‘Draw Something’ ousted Zynga’s ‘Words with Friends’ as the top Facebook Connect game worldwide. With over 20 million new users on board, the newest mobile craze dispatched of the competition with ease. Now, Zynga is expected to pony up approximately $200 million to acquire the studio. (Photo by Asiatic League) source
Our first piece of “Jetson” technology appears to be a new take on Thomas Edison’s most-famous invention. Tech manufacturer NEC is now in the first stages of testing a new, mobile app-ready, light bulb with built-in speakers. They hope to have the technology perfected in time to begin marketing the new bulbs by the end of 2012. Take a look at the video to see this new technical monstrosity in action. source
Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices. However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.Adobe Vice President and General Manager of Interactive Development Danny Winokur • Offering up an explanation for why the company has decided to stop actively developing their Flash mobile products — which Steve Jobs famously ripped apart in an open letter last year. With the iPhone no longer a viable platform for Flash development and the problems developing Flash on mobile devices becoming increasingly obvious, Adobe has decided to change its course entirely. More emphasis on tools (of which Flash is one); less emphasis on across-the-board development platforms. Adobe’s been moving in this direction for a little while; back in August, they released a tool called Edge, which is like Flash for HTML5. Think it’s the right move for them? source (via • follow)
usualchatter asks: It's unfortunate, but the new gallery format here on Tumblr makes your site and stories unreadable on an iPhone. I suspect Android has the same issues.
» SFB says: We apologize for the issues and will look into it in the next few days. For what it’s worth, it looks like the Tumblr default iPhone theme doesn’t handle the issue too well either; but it looks like they updated the theme for them, at the very least. Thanks for the note. — Ernie @ SFB
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
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Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
The fine print in the NYT’s paywall: Have you been wondering to yourself, “Who the heck would pay $260 extra to subscribe to the iPad version of the New York Times?” So have a lot of people. From a distance, the price plan makes little sense and makes the paper nearly as expensive as the dead-tree version (which costs $770 a year for the seven-days-a-week edition outside of NYC). But Poynter’s Damon Kiesow has a really interesting take on the matter which a lot of people haven’t considered: What if the Times wants to discourage mobile app use by pricing them at a premium, specifically with the iPad version? (above pic taken by Robert Scoble — yes, that’s the man’s hand)
» What this all means to you: Now, if you’ve ever used an iPad, it’s pretty clear that the New York Times Web site is as good, if not better than, the NYT iPad app, at least for now. And if they want to further emphasize the tablet-y nature of the iPad, they already have that in the form of Times Skimmer. Furthermore, Apple doesn’t take a 30 percent cut out of Web-based subscriptions. Damon Kiesow’s perfectly apt reasoning, then, is that the NYT is trying to de-emphasize the App Store by pricing people out of that direction. And you know what? He’s right. The NYT Web site will work fine on the iPad. There is an advantage to using NYT’s app on your cell phone, so that’s kept at a more reasonable cost, but the NYT’s plan to focus on the Web over the app? Sneaky.
The problem with the apps is that they are much more directly cannibalistic of the print products than the website. People interact with it much more like they do with the traditional product.News Corp. Europe and Asia head (and Rupert’s kid) James Murdoch • Explaining why mobile apps are a danger to his company’s business model. Sorry James, but if you don’t like it, deal with it. The two papers that you’ve put behind paywalls so far have lost most of their readership, so clearly you understand your market. Oh, who are we kidding? You have no clue about the online or mobile spaces. source (via • follow)
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